Something to Sneeze At

Once again, Theatre Three takes top sirloin and turns it into hash. Or to put it in more pollen-related terms, they have plucked a prize-winning bloom and treated it like ragweed.

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There's an infectious likability about the community theater production of Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know currently running at Richardson Centre Theatre. The average Joes and Jills in the cast make it a party, singing and dancing through 90 minutes of silly songs about the troubles of traveling hither and yon in this age of automated reservations lines and inquisitive customs clerks. In the blackout sketches, they keep the timing crisp, and they get their laughs. The pianist, Adam Wright, plays like a whiz. It's a good time.

The lighthearted revue, directed by Rachael Lindley, is based on travel writing by Fodor's scribe Wendy Perrin, with book, lyrics and music by a dozen other people. There's a love song to Uzbekistan, and "Naked in Pittsburgh," a comic ditty about lost luggage sung by a businessman in a motel towel. A foursome harmonizes the wonders of the all-day shipboard smorgasbord. A man with a lisp findth a thweetie in Thpain, where the speech defect goes unnoticed. For the sophisticates, there's a clever twist on Noel Coward's Private Lives, his play about ex-spouses who run into each other on their second (or is it third?) honeymoons.

Among the nine performers, two standouts skip forth. Meredith Morton is a lithe redhead with a real flair for comedy (she was terrif in the recent Anton in Show Business at DTC's Frank's Place). She does good stuff here in her solo, "Star Search," which has her twirling batons in a cruise passenger talent show. And Morgan Spollin comes to life in a hilarious bit of deadpan, translating increasingly ridiculous French phrases for a Piaf-y chanteuse.

Secrets Every Smart Traveler... turns out to be worth the trip.